In the course of pursuing my daily routine I'm frequently accosted by panhandlers. My usual reaction is to put my head down and walk past, fast. Too busy making a living! That is the message I'm trying to convey but the truth is that I'm embarrassed--that they're asking me for help, that I don't know what's best to do. Sometimes, at the end of the freeway ramp, I miss the light and I have to sit in my idling car within a few feet of one till it turns green. Excruciating when the normal defense is rendered useless for forty seconds.
I think I'm going to start giving them a buck or two. I can't see why not. The normal sort of considerations that you hear don't seem very persuasive. Their need for help is regarded as proof of their unworthiness to receive it: a perfect circle of catch-22 illogic. It's not that they're unlucky, we are told, but that they lack intelligence and "pluck." This is too simple a conception of unlucky. Suppose it's true, they're stupid. Why are the people who advance this argument too stupid to comprehend that it's bad luck to be stupid?
If my wife says that I can't afford it, I plan to point out that my daily proposed cash outlay for alms is a fraction of my outlay for overpriced coffee drinks. If once a week I drink instant coffee brought from home, I'll probably be ahead, and I'll feel better.
There are variations on the unworthiness theme. Disapproval over what they will do with my hard earned money, for instance. "They're only going to buy liquor." How do you know? Anyway, I don't care. It's one of the things I buy myself. "I'll bet he's not really a Vietnam vet." Again, so what? It's just the panhandler's equivalent of padding your resume. You going to prove that you're a no-nonsense man of the world by not giving him a dollar?
It's possible some of these fellows aren't even desperate. They go to the freeway ramp like I go to the office, and the people who help them are just rewarding this unproductive form of labor. But a lot of people who "go to the office" are just doing the same thing as the panhandlers--thinking of ways to get money. Begging on the freeway ramp can't be worse than pooling and "securitizing" thousands of mortgage loans, then selling them to investors who know better than to give money to panhandlers.
